Comcast quality reduction to squeeze in more HD channels

[Manedwolf]

An interesting read if you have this service.

Apparently, this ties with their switch of slogan from "The best HD quality" to "The most HD channels".

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008271

[K Frame]

Ah, they've adopted the Stalin model...

Quantity has a quality all its own...

[Leatherneck]

I despise COMCAST.

TC

[mtnbkr]

Has anyone ever been truly happy with Comcast?  I've never heard anyone say they really liked what they were getting for their money.

Chris

[Manedwolf]

I am not too thrilled with them, period, neither their service nor their rates.

But there's no alternative for broadband in my area.   FIOS was a no-show, and likely won't show up for years, if ever. If it did, I'd be on that in seconds.

Competition is a good thing. As it is now, Comcast in northern New England is like that old SNL skit about the phone company.

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're Comcast."

[charby]

Last fall Mediacomm (aka Media-crime) dropped all their west coast versions of pay movie channels so they can add more HD channels that one will have to pay extra to subscribe too. Did they drop the cost of HBO because they removed half the channels? No.

If any of the dish networks had video on demand, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

[InfidelSerf]

We dumped Comcrap when they started actively blocking bittorrent traffic, and then lied about doing it.
Not to mention they lied to everyone by selling "unlimited" bandwidth plans only to say later that, people were "abusing" it.

[K Frame]

That's what finally got me to move away from Cox cable, Charby.

They kept moving channels that I watched over to their "digital" tiers. Extra cost.

Did they replace the channels they moved? Hell no, just open blank slots.

Did they reduce the bills for those of us who were losing channels? Hell no.

[Manedwolf]

That's what finally got me to move away from Cox cable, Charby.

They kept moving channels that I watched over to their "digital" tiers. Extra cost.

Did they replace the channels they moved? Hell no, just open blank slots.

Did they reduce the bills for those of us who were losing channels? Hell no.

That moving to digital tiers is extremely annoying if you have a number of secondary TVs around the house. Of course, they'd be happy to rent you an additional digital box for each.

For OTA digital TV, there's only a few stations you can get here because the hills ruin line of sight. One local NBC, PBS on good days, and, of course, a Spanish station, which has the strongest signal! (Isn't that how it is everywhere?)

My Macbook has an HD tuner, and I've noticed that the 1080i OTA HD is indeed a lot sharper than Comcast's stuff I have to pay for.

[charby]

That's what finally got me to move away from Cox cable, Charby.

They kept moving channels that I watched over to their "digital" tiers. Extra cost.

Did they replace the channels they moved? Hell no, just open blank slots.

Did they reduce the bills for those of us who were losing channels? Hell no.

Wife and I might talk tonight, I checked the price of dish network and direct tv. I can get the same stuff we have now and lot more channels for less money per month. If we get it, this means six months of repeated questions from my wife on how to work the device. She still hasn't figured out how to record or find stuff on the DVR.

[Manedwolf]

If you really want to make a hobby of it, apparently you can get an old Primestar dish and use its unique feed system to receive free-to-broadcast feeds from a number of satellites that are sending it down for redistribution by any local stations. You just need a tuner/decoder for a few hundred, plus a way to aim the dish and show when you've locked on to a "bird".

There's entire websites of the coordinates needed to aim at the different satellites, as well as the feeds they carry. Apparently, you can get free HD feeds and the major news networks pre-commercial, with either blanks or the people still milling around the station, as well as a number of foreign direct feeds from around the world. I know of someone who has a setup like that who is able to watch those crazy Japanese gameshows live on a Tokyo station being rebroadcast from one of the feeds.

[charby]

If you really want to make a hobby of it, apparently you can get an old Primestar dish and use its unique feed system to receive free-to-broadcast feeds from a number of satellites that are sending it down for redistribution by any local stations. You just need a tuner/decoder for a few hundred, plus a way to aim the dish and show when you've locked on to a "bird".

There's entire websites of the coordinates needed to aim at the different satellites, as well as the feeds they carry. Apparently, you can get free HD feeds and the major news networks pre-commercial, with either blanks or the people still milling around the station, as well as a number of foreign direct feeds from around the world. I know of someone who has a setup like that who is able to watch those crazy Japanese gameshows live on a Tokyo station being rebroadcast from one of the feeds.

And you will show up to demonstrate to my wife how this works? Plan on staying the guest room for 6 months.

[Manedwolf]

If you really want to make a hobby of it, apparently you can get an old Primestar dish and use its unique feed system to receive free-to-broadcast feeds from a number of satellites that are sending it down for redistribution by any local stations. You just need a tuner/decoder for a few hundred, plus a way to aim the dish and show when you've locked on to a "bird".

There's entire websites of the coordinates needed to aim at the different satellites, as well as the feeds they carry. Apparently, you can get free HD feeds and the major news networks pre-commercial, with either blanks or the people still milling around the station, as well as a number of foreign direct feeds from around the world. I know of someone who has a setup like that who is able to watch those crazy Japanese gameshows live on a Tokyo station being rebroadcast from one of the feeds.

And you will show up to demonstrate to my wife how this works? Plan on staying the guest room for 6 months.

Heh! Why I said "Make a hobby of it"...you need a receiver like the CoolSat 8000 or such, which makes a TiVo look like a simple on-off switch. 

the Coolsat 8000HD FTA receiver. Able to decode QPSK satellite and ATSC Over the Air (OTA) terrestrial transmissions, Mpeg2 and Mpeg4, HDTV, SDTV display support, HDMI & Component Outputs.

[Brad Johnson]

DirecTV.

Brad

[Manedwolf]

DirecTV.

Brad

Can't. Townhouse. No dish.

[K Frame]

"No dish."

What do you mean, "no dish"?

Do you mean that your HOA won't allow you to put a dish up?

To put it bluntly, Federal law largely prevents them from doing that. They can claim they have the right to keep you from putting up a satellite dish, but you can quickly and easily slap them down.

Here's a starting point for information... http://www.ccfj.net/FCClaw.htm

Go to the FCC site for more information.

[Manedwolf]

It's not owned, it's a rented townhouse thing.

[mtnbkr]

What Mike said...

I have a townhouse with two dishes (the bird is on the other side of the house and I need two to get enough signal).  I also have a 20' tall amateur radio antenna for HF and a shorter one for amateur radio VHF. 

Chris

[mtnbkr]

It's not owned, it's a rented townhouse thing.

I think FCC rules have something to say about that as well.  I know around here lots of renters have dish tv of various flavors.  My next door neighbors are renters and they have one of the dish systems.

Chris

[Manedwolf]

AFAIK, you're not allowed to put anything on the outside of your unit. Which is honestly fine with me. They look like this:



And they look nice, like a little luxury resort, not dishes stuck out at all angles. I've talked with the property owners about the possibility of putting a MDU dish between the roof peaks serving all units in the buildings if they want a choice from Comcast, and they're actually looking into that.

[K Frame]

Well, if the property owner is telling you that you can't mount a dish on HIS property, I think that's his right.

[HankB]

. . . For OTA digital TV, there's only a few stations you can get here because the hills ruin line of sight . . .

I feel your pain, living on the edge of the Texas hill country just west of Austin.

In order to protect consumers from crosstalk, Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through regs that required TV stations to be 7 channels apart. His family owned channel 7, which meant all other channels were forced into the UHF bands . . . which don't do well without direct line of sight.

That's why I have cable. 

[JohnBT]

"Has anyone ever been truly happy with Comcast?"

I was, for many years, with a 21-year-old 19" Mitsubishi and basic service.

Now I've seen the light. On 1/4 I hooked my new Samsung lcd up to FiOS. I'm just plain slow, I've had FiOS internet service for almost 2 years. Service and picture = great. Billing office = hopeless.

John

[LAK]

Intensely irritating is this switch to "paid programming" overnight. If they want paid programming - have an advertizing channel. People that like to watch advertizing can then watch that junk all night long.

Another intense irritation is that I am "paying" (see below) for a large number of channels in a foreign language. Yes, I can "block" them - but why should I be paying for these involuntarily?

As far as I am concerned - there is nothing on the telescreen I can not live without. There is never coverage of some of the motorsports I am interested in, and I do not waste my time with the trash "entertainment" etc that dominates so many channels. There is very little outside some of the TCM films (wonderfully ad free), sometimes AMC, and the odd History Channel feature that I'll actually watch.

If it were not for the fact that we get Comcast "free" (meaning: it's loaded into the rent) I wouldn't pay for it. Unless you could select one or more channels and pay a flat monthly fee for each one that works out to an equal fraction of the total number of channels in the basic service.

----------------------------------

http://searchronpaul.com
http://ussliberty.org/oldindex.html
http://www.gtr5.com
http://ssunitedstates.org

[HankB]

If it were not for the fact that we get Comcast "free" (meaning: it's loaded into the rent) I wouldn't pay for it. Unless you could select one or more channels and pay a flat monthly fee for each one that works out to an equal fraction of the total number of channels in the basic service.

But then channels like BET and Telemundo wouldn't survive, and people have a RIGHT to their daily fix of "Get Whitey" movies and telenovellas . . .